Hatching Eggs - Duck Breeds

Daffy Duck, of Warner Brothers fame, is probably a Black Swedish - the only difference is that Daffy has white on his neck and a Black Swedish has white on its chest.
They are a hardy, strong duck with good foraging ability. The advantage of the Black Swedish over the Blue Swedish is that the Black Swedish breed true.
If you mate a Black Swedish with a Black Swedish, all the progeny will be Black Swedish. As with the Blue Swedish, the Black Swedish was developed in the Pomerania
area of Europe. At the time it was part of the Swedish Kingdom but is now the area of northeast Germany and northwest Poland.
They were first imported into the USA in the late 1800s.

All Runners were originally bred in Southeast Asia for high egg production and excellent mobility.
There is evidence of their ancient ancestry from stone carvings in Java that are over 2000 years old. These ducks are still being used as they were then.
Flocks of ducks are herded daily from field to field eating waste rice, weed seeds, insects, slugs and other bugs.
They are then put in a bamboo pen at night where they lay their eggs and are released the following morning to clean other fields.
During the course of their lives the ducks may cover hundreds of miles in their travels. Therefore a hardy mobile duck is absolutely necessary-you will not find a better foraging duck than the Runner.

As they are light in weight, there is also less chance of them trampling the vegetation in your garden or yard. Because of the high egg production of the native ducks, duck eggs are used in a variety of ways in Southeast Asia. Not only do they replace the typical chicken egg but duck eggs are made into two unique products, the balut (a partially incubated duck egg) and the salted egg (fresh eggs put in a salt solution or salt mud until the salt has permeated the entire egg). Due to the emphasis in coloration over the past 80 years in the breeding programs in England and the United States, the Runners no longer excel at egg production. They are very average at this point.

Why are they called Indian Runners? Tradition has it the ducks were first imported into England in the 1850s and were named Indians as the ship had proceeded from
India and had traded with the "Indies". It wasn't until 1909 that the importing family acknowledged that they came from Southeast Asia - not India. But by then the
name had stuck and the breed was extremely popular throughout the country. Until the Khaki Campbell was bred, Runners were by far the most productive egg laying ducks.
Prior to the turn of the century there were many egg trials in England where representatives of different breeds and farmers were put on a common site and their egg
production monitored and compared.

All Runners were originally bred in Southeast Asia for high egg production and excellent mobility.
There is evidence of their ancient ancestry from stone carvings in Java that are over 2000 years old. These ducks are still being used as they were then.
Flocks of ducks are herded daily from field to field eating waste rice, weed seeds, insects, slugs and other bugs.
They are then put in a bamboo pen at night where they lay their eggs and are released the following morning to clean other fields.
During the course of their lives the ducks may cover hundreds of miles in their travels. Therefore, a hardy mobile duck is absolutely necessary -
you will not find a better foraging duck than the Runner.

As they are light in weight, there is also less chance of them trampling the vegetation in your garden or yard.
Because of the high egg production of the native ducks, there are many duck eggs used in Southeast Asia. Not only do they replace the typical chicken egg but duck
eggs are made into two unique products, the balut (a partially incubated duck egg) and the salted egg (fresh eggs put in a salt solution or salt mud until the salt
has permeated the entire egg). Due to the emphasis in coloration over the past 80 years in the breeding programs in England and the United States, the Runners no longer excel at egg production. They are very average at this point.

Why are they called Indian Runners? Tradition has it the ducks were first imported into England in the 1850s and were named Indians as the ship had proceeded from
India and had traded with the "Indies". It wasn't until 1909 that the importing family acknowledged that they came from Southeast Asia - not India. But by then the
name had stuck and the breed was extremely popular throughout the country. Until the Khaki Campbell was bred, Runners were by far the most productive egg laying ducks.
Prior to the turn of the century there were many egg trials in England where representatives of different breeds and farmers were put on a common site and their egg
production monitored and compared.

The first Runners imported into England were either Fawn, Fawn-and-White, or White in color. The first records of them being in an exhibition were in 1877 at the
Dumfries Show in Scotland. In 1898 they were admitted into the American Standard Registry. The Black, Blue and Chocolate were not admitted until 1977.
Though the Black and Chocolate breed true, the Blue do not as only 50% of their progeny are Blue. So that we produce 100% Blue colored birds,
we have two pens of breeders. One pen has Black Runner males on Silver females. The other pen has Silver males on Black females.

Blue Swedish are similar in size to the Rouen and are very hardy ducks. They were developed in an area called Pomerania which comprises the coastal regions of Germany, Holland and Belgium. For many years this area was under the Swedish throne. As there are several written references to the breed in the 1850s, development probably occurred in the 1830s and 1840s.

The most interesting component of the Blue Swedish breed is the production of the blue color. Blue birds do not breed true. In other words, if you mate a Blue Swedish
with another Blue Swedish, only 50% will hatch blue. You will also get 25% black with white chests (called Black Swedish) and 25% that are a very light grey color,
often called Silver or Splashed White Swedish. To produce the blue color you must have heterozygote parents, meaning they have a black and a silver gene for feather
color. In addition, the first two or three primary flight feathers are pure white in a Blue or Black Swedish duck. This, along with the correctly sized white patch
on the chest, makes the Blue Swedish a difficult bird to perfect in terms of feather coloration.

So that we can produce 100% blue colored Blue Swedish, we have two breeder flocks. In one flock we have Black Swedish males and Silver females.
In the other flock we have Silver males and Black Swedish females. All the progeny from these crosses will be the correct blue color.
In June when we need breeders for next year, we switch the males so Black are on Black and Silver on Silver.
We collect these eggs for about three weeks and hatch them for breeders.
Then we switch the males and go back to producing the correctly colored Blue Swedish for the rest of the season. This is the reason we do not have Blue Swedish or Blue Runners available in July of each year.

The Buff or Buff Orpington was developed by the William Cook family who lived in the Orpington area of Kent, England in the early 1900s.
It was developed as a multipurpose bird, with the ability to lay good quantities of eggs along with having the size and feather color to make a good roasting duck.
Some even claim that the buff colored feathers are easier to pluck than the white Pekin feathers.

Though the Buff breeds true (progeny have the same color as parents), they originated from a variety of breeds.
W. Powell-Owen described this breeding program in 1918 "Runners were mated to Aylesburys, Runners to Rouens and Runners to Cayugas, and the progeny were crossed with one another until the buff plumage was secured."
They entered the United States in 1908. Interestingly, they are the only poultry breed admitted in the American Standard of Perfection with their name as a color only. Orpington should have been used to describe the breed and
Buff for the variety. They remain a very beautiful and popular breed.

The Cayuga breed is thought to have been developed from the wild Black Duck breed in the region of Lake Cayuga in New York. This makes it one of the few duck breeds originating in the United States.
Prior to the arrival of the Pekin breed, they were the bird of choice for meat production in the Northeast. Once the Pekin arrived with its white feathers and cleaner appearing carcass, the Cayuga quickly lost its appeal.
They remain a very hardy duck and many of their eggs have varying degrees of gray in the shell color. On rare occasions they will lay a pure black egg.

Their feather color is very similar to the
Black East Indie but records indicate the Cayuga was developed before the Black East Indie. Both have a very brilliant "beetle" green sheen to their feathers. This is especially evident on the head of the male.
As they age, however, Cayuga become almost all white after several years. This changing of colors occurs much quicker in females than males. In addition, their black legs turn more orangish in color as they age.

All Runners were originally bred in Southeast Asia for high egg production and excellent mobility.
There is evidence of their ancient ancestry from stone carvings in Java that are over 2000 years old. These ducks are still being used as they were then.
Flocks of ducks are herded daily from field to field eating waste rice, weed seeds, insects, slugs and other bugs.
They are then put in a bamboo pen at night where they lay their eggs and are released the following morning to clean other fields.
During the course of their lives the ducks may cover hundreds of miles in their travels. Therefore, a hardy mobile duck is absolutely necessary -
you will not find a better foraging duck than the Runner.

As they are light in weight, there is also less chance of them trampling the vegetation in your garden or yard.
Because of the high egg production of the native ducks, there are many duck eggs used in Southeast Asia. Not only do they replace the typical chicken egg but duck
eggs are made into two unique products, the balut (a partially incubated duck egg) and the salted egg (fresh eggs put in a salt solution or salt mud until the salt
has permeated the entire egg). Due to the emphasis in coloration over the past 80 years in the breeding programs in England and the United States, the Runners no longer excel at egg production. They are very average at this point.

Why are they called Indian Runners? Tradition has it the ducks were first imported into England in the 1850's and were named Indians as the ship had proceeded from
India and had traded with the "Indies". It wasn't until 1909 that the importing family acknowledged that they came from Southeast Asia - not India. But by then the
name had stuck and the breed was extremely popular throughout the country. Until the Khaki Campbell was bred, Runners were by far the most productive egg laying ducks.
Prior to the turn of the century there were many egg trials in England where representatives of different breeds and farmers were put on a common site and their egg
production monitored and compared.

The first Runners imported into England were either Fawn, Fawn-and-White, or White in color. The first records of them being in an exhibition were in 1877 at the
Dumfries Show in Scotland. In 1898 they were admitted into the American Standard Registry. The Black, Blue and Chocolate were not admitted until 1977.
Though the Black and Chocolate breed true, the Blue do not as only 50% of their progeny are Blue. So that we produce 100% Blue colored birds,
we have two pens of breeders. One pen has Black Runner males on Silver females. The other pen has Silver males on Black females.

All Runners were originally bred in Southeast Asia for high egg production and excellent mobility.
There is evidence of their ancient ancestry from stone carvings in Java that are over 2000 years old. These ducks are still being used as they were then.
Flocks of ducks are herded daily from field to field eating waste rice, weed seeds, insects, slugs and other bugs.
They are then put in a bamboo pen at night where they lay their eggs and are released the following morning to clean other fields.
During the course of their lives the ducks may cover hundreds of miles in their travels. Therefore, a hardy mobile duck is absolutely necessary -
you will not find a better foraging duck than the Runner.

As they are light in weight, there is also less chance of them trampling the vegetation in your garden or yard.
Because of the high egg production of the native ducks, duck eggs are used in a variety of ways in Southeast Asia. Not only do they replace the typical chicken egg but duck
eggs are made into two unique products, the balut (a partially incubated duck egg) and the salted egg (fresh eggs put in a salt solution or salt mud until the salt
has permeated the entire egg). Due to the emphasis in coloration over the past 80 years in the breeding programs in England and the United States, the Runners no longer excel at egg production. They are very average at this point.

Why are they called Indian Runners? Tradition has it the ducks were first imported into England in the 1850s and were named Indians as the ship had proceeded from
India and had traded with the "Indies". It wasn't until 1909 that the importing family acknowledged that they came from Southeast Asia - not India. But by then the
name had stuck and the breed was extremely popular throughout the country. Until the Khaki Campbell was bred, Runners were by far the most productive egg laying ducks.
Prior to the turn of the century there were many egg trials in England where representatives of different breeds and farmers were put on a common site and their egg
production monitored and compared.

The first Runners imported into England were either Fawn, Fawn-and-White, or White in color. The first records of them being in an exhibition were in 1877 at the
Dumfries Show in Scotland. In 1898 they were admitted into the American Standard Registry. The Black, Blue and Chocolate were not admitted until 1977.
Though the Black and Chocolate breed true, the Blue do not as only 50% of their progeny are Blue. So that we produce 100% Blue colored birds,
we have two pens of breeders. One pen has Black Runner males on Silver females. The other pen has Silver males on Black females.

The Jumbo Pekin is our largest strain of Pekin. Commercial Pekin ducks are produced by crossing a male from a large, meaty strain of Pekin with a
female Pekin from a medium sized, highly fertile good egg producing strain. With this cross you get a large number of ducklings from the female
that grow into good sized birds because of the size of the male. The Jumbo Pekin ducklings are from a pure male line.

They are probably the largest Pekin you can get. For exhibition they are excellent for Meat Pens but do not have the special conformation necessary for show Pekins.
They have been bred for size and meat production, not the specialized standards of show Pekins. Please note our breeders do not look particularly large as they have
been on a diet most of their life prior to egg production. By keeping them slim and trim we are able to increase egg production by at least 40% and fertility by 10%.
If they are not kept on a diet, the males reach at least 11 pounds and the females 9.5 pounds in three months.

Because we sell thousands of edible duck eggs a week, it is important we produce eggs efficiently and consistently. In 1996 we developed the Golden 300 Hybrid as they lay more and larger eggs, have a higher fertility and are calmer than the Khaki Campbell. The Khaki Campbell may be a good egg producer in small flocks but we were never satisfied with their production in our larger commercial flocks. Because of this inconsistency, we developed the Golden 300 Hybrid by crossing and utilizing the attributes of different duck breeds.

The Golden 300 Hybrid can be sexed at any age by its color as the males are shades of black and the females are shades of brown. Unfortunately, they do not retain this characteristic in future generations. So if you mate a Golden 300 Hybrid with another Golden 300 Hybrid, their progeny will hatch in blacks, yellows and browns with no relationship between sex and color.

As adults the females range in color from a very light brown to a very dark brown, often with areas of white on them. Males can appear much like a Rouen, or a dull looking Cayuga or with white and dark markings.

Some of our customers wanted a white bird that laid as well as the Golden 300 Hybrid. In 1999 we developed the White Layer to meet this demand.
The egg production of these two breeds is identical on our farm.

For us, the Golden 300 is a calm bird, much like the Buff, Cayuga, and Blue Swedish. However, we have had reports from some (not all) customers that they are a very nervous bird, much like the Khaki Campbell. We cannot explain why some flocks are calm and some are nervous. Our guess is that at some point they were panicked enough that they were permanently traumatized and spent the rest of their lives nervous. We don't know when ducks are most sensitive to this trauma nor why it happens to some flocks and not others.

This table shows how the Golden 300 Hybrid compares to the Khaki Campbell (historically considered the best egg layer) on our farm.

All our Pekin breeders are purchased from Grimaud Freres, a French poultry breeding company.
Their first breeding efforts were with Muscovy and Mule ducks but quickly expanded to Pekin ducks, rabbits, geese, pigeons, turkeys and chickens.
The strain of Pekin ducks we use is the Grimaud Hybrid Pekin, Strain 53. This is a fast growing, feed efficient duck. It is of 100% Pekin blood.
It is called a hybrid as we cross males from their Line 50 with the females from their Line 30 to produce the commercial duckling we sell. The Line 30 ducks are a good sized bird and lay a high number of fertile eggs.
The Line 50 ducks are a very large duck with outstanding meat characteristics. We sell from 5,000 to 12,000 ducklings per week of this strain for meat production. Following is the standard production performance of the Grimaud Hybrid:

Age at slaughter, days

49

Live weight, lbs.

8.1

Eviscerated weight, lbs.

5.26

Feed conversion

2.29

Mortality, %

2.5

Breast filet, %

25.5

If you do not want as large a bird, you can process at a younger age. Some of my customers are processing at 41-42 days of age as they only want a 7 pound live weight
bird.
We will send you a Commercial Duck Management Guide with your first order of 120 or more ducklings - just ask for it when you place your order.

The Khaki Campbell is one of the more famous and popular duck breeds due to its excellent egg production.
It was introduced in 1901 by Mrs. Adele Campbell of Gloucestershire, England. She experimented with Runners crossed with Rouen and Mallards but never revealed
the exact genetic makeup of her Campbells. The advantage over the pure Runner was a more useful carcass for meat and improved egg production.
Though they have been turned into an exhibition type breed, she was adamant that her birds were designed for production, not the exhibition hall.

Initially they were a fairly mixed color breed but later an emphasis was placed on the current khaki color. It is interesting that at the same time the
khaki color was being bred into the Campbell, there was a patriotic fervor for the British troops fighting the Boer War who also wore the khaki color.
Once the "Khaki" was attached to "Campbell", the breed gained even more popularity. The Khaki Campbell gained even more renown due to the egg laying contests
where it averaged up to 39 more eggs laid than the second best breed. One Khaki Campbell laid 346 eggs in 365 days while another laid one egg a day for 225
straight days!

Khaki Campbells gained even more notoriety with the standards established by the Jansen family of Holland who had up to 50,000 ducks laying at a time with
egg production averages of 335-340 eggs in 365 days during the 1950s. They started in production at about 20 weeks of age and egg size averaged 72 grams
(2.6 ounces). Mortality during growth and their first year of egg production was only 2.5%. Interestingly, each duck was penned in its own pen and shelter
which surely contributed to their outstanding production. Eventually the Jansen flock was dispersed but the Khaki Campbell tradition was carried on by the
Kortlang family in England who still breeds them. John Metzer has visited the Kortlang farm and our Khaki Campbells have some Kortlang blood in them.

Mallards are native to most countries in the Northern Hemispheres. It is thought that all domestic ducks except Muscovy are derived from the wild Mallard, or "Greenhead" as some call them. They are a small, flying duck that is hunted widely. Our Mallards retain this excellent flying ability.
In addition, they do an excellent job of hatching and raising one or two broods of ducklings a year. Mallards start to fly for short spurts at 10-12 weeks and
are flying very well by 16 weeks. It is also at about 14-16 weeks that the males get their beautiful coloring - prior to that both the males and females are similarly colored in shades of brown.

We have sold our ducklings for pets, but also for dog training and hunting preserves. We do not ship our started or adult birds through the mail - only the day old ducklings which are hatched every week of the year. If you are close enough to pick them up, or have us deliver them, we can raise our Mallards for your dog trials or hunting preserve.

Our prices here at the farm for adult, fully colored, fully flying birds are as follows: For 1-9, the price is $17.00 per bird; 10-49 is $16.00, and for 50 or more, the price is $14.00 per bird.

A permit is not needed to own or sell Mallard ducklings. All domestically hatched Mallard ducklings are required to be identified by US Fish and Wildlife. Our method is to remove a back toe when they hatch.
This is an acceptable method by the US Fish and Wildlife and you do not need to do any other marking of our Mallards at any time. This is to show, if you were ever inspected, that the birds were domestically hatched and
not "kidnapped" out of a local marsh.

Pekins are the most common domestic duck - the adults are pure white and the ducklings are a cute yellow. You ask someone to picture a duck and they will normally envision a Pekin. The Aflac duck often seen on TV advertisements is a Pekin (we supplied them with the initial ducklings that eventually grew into the famous Aflac duck).
They are a large, hardy breed with excellent egg production if managed properly. Selection by breeders over the years has produced a duck that can often be processed by 40 days of age at a live weight of seven pounds. Though their feed efficiency does not match that of chickens, they can still produce one pound of live weight from 2.5 pounds or less of feed. They do not fly and do not normally hatch and raise their own young.

This breed has been farmed since at least 2500 BC in the Beijing (formerly called Pekin) area of China. They were introduced into America in the 1870s by Mr. McGrath who saw them in the city of Beijing. He hatched 15 eggs under a chicken in Beijing and after the ducklings were started, entrusted them to a Mr. Palmer for the journey to New York who was to receive half the ducklings upon their arrival. Six ducks and three drakes made the journey and half were sent to the McGrath family in New York. Unfortunately they never made the journey as they were eaten before they ever made it to the McGrath Farm. Fortunately Mr. Palmer cared for his ducks and they constituted the first Pekin flock in America.
More were eventually imported from China and they quickly became the most popular meat duck in North America.

Pekin ducks in North America are fairly horizontal in stature. Pekins in Europe, however, are very vertical in shape almost Runner in carriage with very short necks. If fed a diet high in corn or alfalfa, the beak and legs in Pekins can become very bright orange in color. As the hen lays, though, she begins to lose that orange color as it is used in the coloration of the yolk of her eggs. Oftentimes you can determine which of your Pekins are laying the best as they will have the lighter, more yellow colored bills. As time goes on, Pekins will often get black splotches on their bill. This is of no harm to the ducks.

Rouens are probably the second most popular breed in North America. They are very beautiful and closely resemble wild Mallards in coloration. The original breed was developed in the Normandy area of France and was given the name Rouen after the city of Rouen. They are second to only Pekins and Muscovy in size and are said to have the most flavorful meat. We have sold our Rouens in the past to growers that have a very specialized meat market. The Rouen is very calm and has a fairly lean carcass.

Some people call Rouens Mallards but that is incorrect as Mallards fly quite easily and Rouens do not. A Rouen is at least three times the weight of a Mallard.

There are two types of Rouen, the show type and the non-show type. We have the non-show type Rouen ducks. The non-show Rouens are good foragers and can produce fine quantities of fertile eggs. The show type Rouens were developed in England and are larger and have a deep keel (a fold of skin that runs from the base of their neck down their abdomen that almost drags on the ground). In addition, the show type Rouen do not lay nearly as many eggs and are less active and fertile.

This beautiful breed of duck was developed by Albert Franz of Germany in the 1930's. He used Pekin, Rouen, Buff and Blue Pommeranian breeds to develop an excellent dual purpose bird that has a light colored
undercoat of feathers to make a better appearing carcass. Mr. Franz was in the war and was held in a prisoner of war camp. When he returned after the war, his birds were gone and he had to start over in developing the breed.
They are a very large duck, second only to the Pekin but are active foragers and also very gentle. They are becoming very popular for exhibition.

The Silver Appleyard breed was developed by Reginald Appleyard of England in the 1930's. Among the heavy weight ducks, Silver Appleyards and the Saxony are considered the most active foragers.
Some claim that the Appleyards have the most flavorful meat of the ducks and they can often hatch and raise their own ducklings. They have not laid a full season for us but they are reputedly the best egg layers among the
heavy weight ducks.

The Welsh Harlequin is a fairly new breed, developed by Leslie Bonnett in Wales from two off-colored Khaki Campbell ducklings in 1949.
They came to the United States in 1968 and were accepted into the American Poultry Association in 2001 in the Light Duck class.
They are becoming a very popular breed due to their multipurpose characteristics. They are calm, inquisitive and excellent foragers.
They seem to be the calmest bird on our farm.

They can also make an outstanding dressed bird as their under-feathers are almost exclusively white making their carcass as pretty as a pure white bird.
Interestingly, they can be sexed after hatching with 90% accuracy by their bill color.
Darker bills mean a male and lighter bills ending in a dark spot are normally females. Within several days this distinction disappears.
They are also a beautiful bird, especially the feather patterns and colors on the adult females.
There are two variations of Welsh Harlequins: Silver and Gold. Ours are the more common Silver variety.

The White Crested is also a classic breed, having records of its presence as early as 1660 due them being in paintings of Jan Steen.
Other Dutch painters such as d'Hondecoeter, Dirk Wyntrack (1670), Peter Casteels III (1723) and Aart Schouman (at the end of the eighteenth century)
also show Crested ducks. Interestingly the Crested duck was admitted into the American Registry (1874) before the British Registry (by 1910).
Though they can make a good utility bird (eggs and meat) their popularity waned and it wasn't until the 1980s that their popularity rose again.

The only crested breeders we have are White but we will occasionally have crested Blue Swedish, Rouen or Buff hatch. Any breed with a crest can be shown in the Crested class.
The ideal crest is large, yet centrally located on the head. It is also not to be split into two lobes. According to several books, 25% of fertile eggs produced from Crested parents will die prematurely and 33% are
supposed to hatch without crests. We do not seem to find this. In addition, over 90% of our White Crested ducklings have good sized crests. We do not sell a White Crested duckling unless it has a crest.

The White Layer was developed several years after the Golden 300 Hybrid as some of our customers wanted a white egg laying bird. The advantage of the white color to these customers is the embryo is a lighter, yellow color which is preferable to the variety of colors in the Golden 300 embryo for balut production. Balut are duck eggs incubated to 17 days, removed from the incubator and cooked. This is a delicacy among some Filipinos, Vietnamese and other southeast Asia populations.

The White Layer has equal egg production to the Golden 300 Hybrid. The only minor difference between it and the Golden 300 Hybrid is that the White Layer lays fewer bluish colored eggs. All the progeny of the White Layer are white.

For us, the White Layer is a calm bird, much like the Buff, Cayuga, and Blue Swedish. However, we have had reports from some (not all) customers that they are a very nervous bird, much like the Khaki Campbell. We cannot explain why some flocks are calm and some are nervous. Our guess is that at some point they were panicked enough that they were permanently traumatized and spent the rest of their lives nervous. We don't know when ducks are most sensitive to this trauma nor why it happens to some flocks and not others.

This table shows how the White Layer compares to the Khaki Campbell (historically considered the best egg layer) on our farm.